


When The Lights Go Out

by Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-15
Updated: 2010-12-15
Packaged: 2017-10-13 16:52:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/139511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/pseuds/Eustacia%20Vye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eames was fascinated by Ariadne, and found more and more to tantalize him as he got to know her better.</p><p>For the inception_kink prompt: <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/4946.html?thread=6225746#t6225746">Eames thinks Ariadne is a doe-eyed innocent. He's wrong.</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	When The Lights Go Out

There was something about Ariadne that gave Eames pause. Though she was young and looked fragile in some ways, she had a core of steel that was tantalizing. She was also whip smart and had a wicked sense of humor when she let it loose, dropping innuendo-laced comments as fast as he did. There didn't seem to be anything serious about the flirting she did with Arthur, which was a good thing. Eames found himself wanting to knock his teeth in sometimes, and had to settle for childish pranks to vent his frustration.

Arthur left the plane at LAX without more than a nod in anyone's direction. He was good at keeping his head down that way. Eames noted that Ariadne looked after him for a moment, almost uncertainly, then went toward baggage claim on her own. It seemed to be a good enough sign that there was definitely nothing serious between them. He hurried after her, his long strides helping him to quickly catch up with her. "Miss," he said in his most charming voice, "is this the right direction for baggage claims?"

Ariadne looked up at him, amused. "It is," she said simply, thinking that was the end of it.

Eames had other ideas about that. "You know, this is an awfully big city. Easy to get lost in it."

Now she was openly smiling at him. "I do know my way around LA. I've been here before."

"Really? Where did you visit?"

"I actually grew up in Malibu," she said. They fell into an easy walking rhythm beside each other, the conversation turning to innocuous topics about LA and weather and the various landmarks that were good for a tourist to go visit. Once they had moved through customs, Ariadne stopped and looked around. Cobb and Miles had gone off somewhere, Arthur was nowhere to be seen, Fischer had been picked up by the limo service and Yusuf was waiting for a taxi. She felt almost deflated, as if this entire thing hadn't really happened. Eames by her side made it feel real, and she didn't need to check her totem for that. There was no way she could have dreamed him up with this much detail.

"Anyplace you want to go?" Eames asked, voice light. They both only had carry-on suitcases and nothing more than that. "I don't have any plans."

"I was going to visit my mother and some friends, maybe, then head back to school." Ariadne looked up at Eames through her eyelashes, appearing incredibly shy and innocent for a moment. "But they don't know I'm here, so I don't have to go right away."

Eames beamed at her. "Brilliant. Then why don't we explore LA together?"

Her hand over his felt electric. "I'd love to."

***

Eames enjoyed being with Ariadne. After they spent time in LA, she went off to visit with her mother and friends for a day before flying back to Paris. Eames surprised her by sitting outside of her apartment building when she was set to arrive home. She invited him up, and they had dinner together. It surprised them both when he bowed out of staying overnight, though the kisses were heady and intoxicating.

He was being a gentleman, which was new for him. It was actually kind of nice.

Ariadne enjoyed seeing movies and plays with him, going to parks on weekends or clubs in the evenings. They talked about a lot of things, often winding up kissing passionately at the end of the evening. Eames brought her to the apartment he had temporarily rented in Paris, which was tiny but had fantastic views. He hadn't brought anyone else there before, and Ariadne was touched by the gesture. That night, clothes finally wound up on the floor of his apartment. His mouth hovered over her bared breasts and he had a hand inside her panties. Ariadne gasped prettily for him, clinging to his shoulders. She was tight around his fingers, making Eames pause. "Have you ever...?" he asked, bringing his mouth up to hers.

"Once a long time ago," she said with an understanding smile. "It sucked."

"All the more reason to make this special, then," Eames murmured against her mouth. He pulled back when she laughed. "What?"

"You're already making it special, Eames," she told him honestly. Her smile was like pure sin. "How about I show you how I feel?"

She might not have had a lot of experience, but her lips and tongue and hands were amazing. He never would have guessed that she had heard of even half of the things she did, let alone know how to do them. Afterward, sated and sprawled out on his floor, Eames looked at Ariadne's smug expression. "Where in the world did you learn how to do that?" he asked, unable to keep the awe out of his voice.

Ariadne smirked. "I had a lot of theoretical education. Now's the first chance for practical experience."

Eames couldn't help but laugh and pull her closer. "Give me a few minutes and I'll give you more practical experience."

"I'll have you ready in one." Her eyes smoldered, and Eames couldn't help but bless his good luck in meeting her.

***

Ariadne was a delightful puzzle, one Eames was determined to solve. She was wonderfully expressive, not fazed in the slightest when he suggested that they try different positions or sexual techniques. He wondered about her at times. She seemed sheltered in some ways but so worldly in others. Not long after they first started seeing each other seriously, Eames was asked to pull a con job for an old contact of his. He had meant for Ariadne to stay in Paris, but somehow she tagged along when he went to Bangladesh. Eames needed to distract his contact's mark and pick his pocket, but the mark was much too alert for him to fall for his usual tricks.

Walking into the bar in a tight dress and high heels, Ariadne instantly had the mark's attention. She laughed at his silly pick up lines, making Eames simmer with frustration. It was only when she suggested doing shots that he realized she was distracting the mark enough that he was no longer paying attention to his jacket pocket. It was simple enough to switch cell phones then, and he had to admire the fact that Ariadne managed to pack away as much alcohol as she did. She wobbled as she left the bar on Eames' arm, grinning up at him with a loopy expression.

"You drank a lot in college, then?" he asked, wondering if he would ever find out the mystery behind that smile she gave him.

"Something like that. There's a trick to it, you know. There's a trick to everything."

Eames never did get a chance to find out what her trick was. She had her tongue in his mouth and her hands in his pants, and it suddenly seemed so much less important.

Later, his fingers skating over the smooth skin of her back, Eames pressed his lips to her temple. "So, tell me about your dissolute youth."

Ariadne laughed delightedly, leaning into his touch. "It really wasn't dissolute, Eames. I always studied. I always knew I wanted to go into architecture."

"Really?"

"Really. For some reason, it just called to me. Like with the dreaming. Pure creation. How could I pass that up? To build entire cities, have all these impossible structures..." She sketched out a massive shape with her hands and grinned at Eames shyly. "I was always a nerd."

"Can't see it, love," Eames teased.

"I'm boring, I promise," Ariadne responded with a grin. "Went to school, did my classwork, came home, did my homework, never really dated."

"But you can drink a man under the table," Eames pointed out.

"Okay, I was awesome at flip cups in high school and college," Ariadne allowed with a laugh. "Nothing exciting about that."

"I think it would be," Eames disagreed. He dropped a kiss onto her forehead. "You did it, after all."

"You are such a romantic. Who would have known?"

He grinned and rolled over onto his back. He pulled her on top of him and kissed her thoroughly. "I imagine you were the kind of girl that everyone _thought_ was so serious and studious. But you would be the one cutting class because you could get away with it."

"Maybe," she allowed with a smile.

"Smoking in the bathroom with the bad girls, perhaps."

She wrinkled her nose. "Couldn't stand that."

"Or painting your nails black and writing awful poetry."

"Not my thing," she said with a laugh. "Try again."

"Hm..." He exaggerated his thinking expression, making her laugh again. "Nothing with police involved. Too over the top for you."

"Very true."

"Underage drinking is a check, but so very ordinary. I don't see you abusing too many chemicals. You value your ability to think far too much."

Ariadne snorted. "Not when I was fourteen."

"Oh?"

"There was this party," she began, shrugging. "It was on a dare and stupid."

"Pot?"

"LSD."

Eames laughed. "No wonder the dreaming doesn't bother you, then."

Ariadne laughed in response. "Yeah, I guess not."

He pulled her down for another lusty kiss. "Shall we find out what else doesn't bother you, love?"

She reached between their bodies to start stroking him. "By all means."

***

Eames tried to get an internal fix on the kind of trouble a younger Ariadne might have gotten into. He liked trying to figure out little clues about the past in her behavior and seeing if it fit. She wouldn't have ever been the type to get involved in anything that would harm people, so murder and mayhem were automatically ruled out. She wasn't a lush and they had already talked about recreational substances. He sometimes joked with her that she secretly had been a teen pop idol, and her voice cracked while singing now because of a terrible, horrible accident that left her unable to sing. Ariadne threw pillows at him with startling accuracy, making him wonder if perhaps she had been into archery. Or sharpshooting.

Well, maybe not sharpshooting. He still had to guide her grip when they did target practice together, and she was nervous around guns at the range.

Ariadne never seemed to question how he kept himself flush with money between jobs, or why sometimes his ID's didn't match. If anything, she had once taken a look at his passport and picked at the laminated edge. "Not very good quality," she remarked, handing it back to him.

"Quite the connoisseur, are you?"

She had flushed, but hadn't elaborated. Thoughts of an underage Ariadne with a fake ID teased him, and he wondered what kinds of clubs in Malibu she would have gone to. She moved like sin, after all, so she had to be very good at defending herself. He knew that he had a hard time resisting her charms, and horny teenagers must have been difficult.

"It would have been beautiful to know you then," he murmured into her skin once. She had smiled fondly at him, her fingers light but possessive over his bared flesh.

"I think it's better that you know me now," she replied, pulling him against her so that their mouths met.

On that point, he had to agree.

***

"You are _nothing_ like the innocent I thought you were," Eames admitted one night in Ariadne's apartment, pointing at her with his chopsticks. They were eating takeout straight out of the cartons, which had amused Eames. She used to be so fussy about using actual plates and forks and spoons and knives; he wondered if she had grown up with money and finery. If that was the case, he had to wonder what happened in her family to make her little acts of rebellion occur.

Ariadne merely laughed. "Well, I never said I didn't know how the world worked."

"Come to think of it, nothing we ever said or did seemed to faze you."

She shook her head. "I'm a big girl, Eames. I can handle just about anything." She grinned at him impishly. "Even you."

"We'll see about that," he said, putting his takeout carton aside before pouncing on her.

"Arthur thinks I'm a bad influence on you," Eames told her afterward, when they were lying together on her living room floor. He propped his head up on an elbow and ran his fingers along her spine. "I think you had a wild streak in you even before Cobb found you."

Ariadne's lip curled into an amused smile. "Well, it's not as if we all go around playing 'Never Have I Ever' in between jobs, you know?"

"Well, I know I was your first _real_ time," Eames replied, voice a little smug. Ariadne playfully smacked him, then settled back down on her stomach, her head propped up on her folded arms. "And there are all these little glimpses that you're much more complicated than we ever thought. I like it."

"What was your first job?" Ariadne asked, eyebrow raised. "Mine apparently set the bar too high. What's a normal first job like?"

Eames snickered. "Nothing normal about me, darling. I was hired on as extra help for an extraction job. It went south pretty quick, and that's when I discovered I could forge. It helped me escape some nasty projections, and I refined the trick ever since."

Ariadne propped up her upper body on her elbows and leaned in to give Eames a kiss. "I'm glad you did."

He slid an arm around her shoulders. "I am, too. Never would have met you otherwise." He kissed her temples. "I probably could have done without a few of the jobs I signed on for, though. Not all of them were good for my health."

She reached over and traced a jagged scar on his arm that he had covered up with a tattoo. "Like that one?"

"Oh, that? No, that's not one of those." He rolled over onto his back and brought her hand to a thin scar along his lower abdomen. "Knife to the gut, just missed my spleen. I would've bled to death if that happened. It didn't even nick the innards."

Ariadne moved to kiss that faint scar, then lick the edge of it. Eames made a contented noise and smiled indulgently at her. "I never got any scars growing up, but it was probably just as dangerous."

"Oh?" He unfolded his arms from beneath his head and ran his hand along her arm. "In what way?"

"My father's business wasn't exactly legal. He didn't always keep business away from home, either." Her voice was quiet. "I was six when he was gunned down at our front gate, and I was maybe ten feet away from it all. I watched him die."

"Ariadne..."

Her smile was soft as she shrugged. "He tried to cheat some mob connections. Not exactly a smart plan. I still missed him, though. My mom did the best she could, stripping out parts of his business and just sticking with the escorts."

Eames blinked. "Wait a minute... Your mother ran a service?"

She laughed at his stunned expression. "Yeah. The girls lived in the house with me. How did you think I learned about sex without doing it? They were pretty vocal about what they did after hours." She grinned and stretched herself out over him. "How else could I afford grad school and my own apartment overseas? It's not exactly cheap, you know," she teased.

"Well now, I suppose you got me by surprise there," Eames said with a laugh. "No wonder crime didn't bother you. It was already a fact of life."

"So many things aren't exactly legal. Why not dreaming? Makes sense to me."

"My practical little princess," Eames said with a smile, pulling her in for a kiss. She shimmied over him, making his breath quicken and his heart race. "Hm. You naked over me. That's suggestive."

"You do like guessing at things," Ariadne teased. "What am I thinking now?"

Eames trailed his fingers along her bare skin before letting them slide into her slick heat. "Hm... Naughty thoughts, I would say. Care to show me what some of the girls talked to you about?"

"They warped my taste in men for life, I swear," Ariadne said, leaning down to kiss him, her arms around his head. "I like them suave and dangerous and just this side of wrong for me."

"In that case, I'm perfect for you," Eames said against her mouth.

"Exactly," she replied with a smile against his lips. There was no need for further words.

***

There was no formal arrangement when they moved in together. Eames had commented that he didn't have a steady place to stay in Paris anymore, and he tended to be there more often than not now. Ariadne had looked around her tiny apartment and merely said "I could use a bigger place."

Most of her prior belongings had been in boxes anyway, her former apartment too tiny to fit all her books and pictures and clothes. The new apartment was spacious, with wide windows that looked out over the city. There was a corner boulangerie that they both liked, as well as a dozen excellent restaurant within an easy five minute walk. The streets were always busy, and the doorman to the building was haughty enough to remember everyone coming and going into the building. It was easily defensible and Arthur made short work of the actual security hook ups. If he had any comments about Ariadne and Eames in a relationship, he kept them to himself all the while. Eames thought he approved, however, given that he had only positive comments about the apartment location and security. If there was one thing that Arthur always took seriously, it was the safety of people he cared about.

Eames unpacked one of the boxes that Ariadne used to use as a nightstand. "Oh, photos. Lovely. There's actual wall space to hang them on."

"Ha ha," she called out from the kitchen, where she was unpacking glasses. "This from the man with no home zip code."

"Makes it harder to track me down."

"That's not always a good thing, you know."

"Oh, I don't know. There have been times when it was safest off the radar." Eames picked out several of the framed photos and held them as he walked over to the kitchen. "I'm all domesticated now, don't you know? Look, all in one place and everything. With a girl in my bed every night." He playfully leered at her. "Same one, even."

Ariadne merely laughed and shook her head. "You're asking for it, Eames."

"Yes, please," he said unrepentantly.

She laughed harder and shooed him out of the kitchen to set about unpacking the glasses and plates. "Be good and I'll show you how very good I can be to you."

Snickering, Eames looked at the photos in his hand. He blinked at the woman standing beside Ariadne. It looked like a high school graduation, because Ariadne looked so very young and petite next to her mother, a tall and willowy woman. He recognized Ariadne's mother, though he couldn't place from where. He knew for a fact he hadn't ever used any escort services in Malibu. He'd only been there once, as a point of fact, and that was for a job perhaps eight years ago.

"Oh! _Colette_ is your mum!" Eames said, memory finally clicking.

Ariadne left the kitchen, a look of confusion on her face. "What?" she took in the photo in his hand and looped an arm around him as she looked at it. "Well, yes. Why?"

"I worked for your Mum once," he said. Ariadne pulled back to look at him incredulously. "Not like _that,_ Ariadne. It was an extraction job. Someone was blackmailing her, and she wanted to know who. Tough cookie, your Mum. I see where you get it from now."

"Good answer," she said with a grin. Taking the photo from him, she put it aside then stood on her tip toes to gave him a kiss. "And?"

"And what? I took my cut of the job and went on to the next one. It was a while ago. I had no idea she even had a luscious little girl tucked away somewhere." Ariadne poked him playfully, making him laugh and catch her wrists in his hands. He held her arms over her head and gave her a deep and passionate kiss. "Someone delicious and just this side of wicked. I like that."

"Well, good. I kinda like you a lot."

Eames grinned at her, feeling almost giddy. "Yeah? Good, 'cause I'm kinda interested in keeping you around."

Ariadne had a grin that matched his. "Kinda why I got the new apartment. I definitely want you hanging around a while."

"Hey," he said after a moment. Ariadne pulled back to look up at him. "Want to show me what else you've learned?"

She laughed and playfully smacked him, then pushed him back toward the bedroom to show him exactly what she had learned.

The End


End file.
